Madonna’s ‘Sex’

Posted on February 8, 2012 by

If you watch my show, I will send you this book featuring me in a variety of sexually-explicit positions! — Krusty, “Krusty Gets Kancelled”/”The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular”

Though Lady Madonna took a fair amount of ribbing over the Super Bowl weekend due to the unmitigated audacity of a 53-year-old woman being 53 years old, it was not so long ago that the singer was a cultural force to be reckoned with, not to mention top of the pops.

So cast your minds back, if you will, to 1992 or thereabouts, on the eve of the release of Madonna’s fifth studio album, Erotica. And cast your eyes to the coffee table book that Madonna and her team released as a companion piece to the album, featuring she, in a variety of sexually-explicit positions!

Here is the link to every single page of this smutty, stupid book. Very not-safe-for-work, unless you intern for Madonna. Have at it.

*spoiler alert* 90s pop star Robert Matthew Van Winkle, a/k/a Vanilla Ice, is actually in this friggin’ book.

Ice, who was dating Madonna when Sex was put together, was apparently so offput by the salacious nature of the finished publication that he broke things off with Madonna and left the music business forever. More gold records for the rest of us, I says.

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Andy Capp

Posted on February 6, 2012 by

Oh, Andy Capp, you wife-beating drunk… — Homer, “Marge vs. The Monorail”

While the character and comic strip Andy Capp may have done little to dispel the myths surrounding Britain’s stereotypically hard-drinkin’ working class, I can’t think of a way to finish this sentence. Launched all the way back in 1957 by a bloke named Reg(inald) Smythe, the Capp (as its fans very well may have called it at some point) paints a humorous portrait of alcoholism and domestic abuse.

Wait a second, that’s terrible. Let’s try again.

Whatever. Anyway, like another strip we recently covered, the Capp has also been churned out for over half a century at this point. Impressive, seeing as how there has to be some limit to jokes about snooker, pints, football, lifts, the vicar, etc. But not today.

That’s actually not bad. Anyway, as you can see, the artwork has evolved from the more New Yorker-ish stylings of the earlier strips to today’s more geometric presentation. This may or may not be a result of the 1987 video game adaptation for the Commodore 64:

Dismal stuff. I’ll stick to Get Carter, thank you very much.

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Soul Train

Posted on February 3, 2012 by

The bear, the bear! — Smithers, “Rosebud”

Of course, much has been written about Soul Train since host Don Cornelius exited this world on Wednesday. I don’t feel particularly compelled to throw in my two cents, as many other pieces since Wednesday have done so.

But I will say that you owe it to yourself to at least check out some of the classic ‘Train clips on YouTube, if only to get a snapshot of a time and place we no longer have access to:

Especially this:

Ah, and it turns out that the Scramble Board was fixed! Cornelius has a pretty great line at the end of this one:

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Colonel Klink

Posted on February 1, 2012 by

Colonel Klink! Did you ever get my letters? — Homer, “The Last Temptation Of Homer”

America’s favorite nazi in the 1960s, Colonel Klink was the chief antagonist of that bygone WWII period piece Hogan’s Heroes.

As the overseer of an Allied P.O.W. camp, Klink, played by German emigré Werner Klemperer, was a bumbling, pompous figure, ripe for hijinks, pratfalls, and, yes, a radio in the coffee pot.

Here he is being outwitted by Sergeant Carter once again:

And, of course, spending a weekend with Batman:

Of course, H² was also known for that other lovable Reichster, Sergeant Schultz!

John Banner, who portrayed Klink’s second-in-command, had himself fled Europe when things started looking bad for himself and his fellow Jews. Ironically, upon arriving to the U.S., the only roles the young actor could find were of the goosestepping variety. That wasn’t the note I was trying to end on here, but there it is.

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When Nixon Met Elvis

Posted on January 30, 2012 by

I know you’ve always had your eye on this photo of Elvis and me. — Mr. Burns

He was so good to his mother, sir. — Smithers, “Burns Verkaufen Der Kraftwerk”

The year is 1970. 1971 is just a year away. 1972? Two years away. And a young man named Elvis Aron Presley is urgently requesting a meeting with the president:

I am Elvis Presley and admire you and have great respect for your office. I talked to Vice President Agnew in Palm Springs three weeks ago and expressed my concern for our country. The drug culture, the hippie elements, the SDS, Black Panthers, etc. do not consider me as their enemy or as they call it the establishment…

The good people over at archives.gov have assembled a comprehensive overview of this meeting of the minds, and I highly recommend investing ten minutes and reading over the various documents they’ve assembled. Here are a few highlights.

The gun Elvis presented to Nixon as a gift at their meeting:

Elvis’s thoughts on a certain mop-haired quartet (I seem to remember their off-key               caterwauling on the old Sullivan show…):

Presley indicated that he thought the Beatles had been a real force for anti-American spirit. He said that the Beatles came to this country, made their money, and then returned to England where they promoted an anti-American theme. The President nodded in agreement…

A less famous photo from the meeting that intrigues me in ways I can’t fully communicate:

And, finally, a clip from Elvis Meets Nixon, a vital TV movie adaptation of the meeting:

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Murphy Brown’s Baby

Posted on January 27, 2012 by

…this writing has none of the wit and sparkle of Murphy Brown. — Marge doppelganger, “Burns’ Heir”

Remember Murphy Brown? Sure you do! The show, featuring CBS’s no-nonsense-tough-as-nails fictional anchorwoman, etched out a nook in pop culture history thanks in no small part to a much-followed storyline in which Ms. Brown entered the world of single motherhood.

As in “Selma’s Choice”, the Murph episode ends in a touching scene in which the new mom/lizard owner sings to her charge that classic Aretha Franklin cut, “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”. For Ms. Brown, it was a callback to an earlier episode that season:

Hey, TV used to be pretty okay!

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Faulkner Goes To Hollywood

Posted on January 25, 2012 by

…of course it was kind of hard to think of reasons for me to look in that exhaust pipe every time, but, you know, we had good writers. William Faulkner can write an exhaust pipe gag that would really make you think. — Moe, “Radioactive Man”

When William Cuthbert Faulkner arrived in tinseltown in May 1932, his resume included seven novels, including canon bombshells As I Lay Dying and The Sound And The Fury, dozens of short stories, and a few poetry collections. It was time to move on to better things.

In order to pay off his debts and keep his swanky Oxford, Miss., lifestyle going, Faulkner served as screenwriter and script doctor for all sorts of Hollywood features, most notably with Howard Hawks, with whom Faulkner collaborated on several flicks, including The Big Sleep, an adaptation of the iconic Raymond Chandler private dick romp.

I was as empty of life as a scarecrow’s pockets. — Philip Marlowe

By all accounts, Faulkner spent his time in Hollywood drinking and being eccentric, a popular combo for the legends among us. He also regularly insulted the people signing his paychecks, a trait embodied by the Simpsons writers decades later.

Hollywood is a place where a man can get stabbed in the back while climbing a ladder. — William Faulkner

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